Weather Blog: Chantal remains Tropical Storm, but barely

After waiting to hear back from the Hurricane Hunter aircraft, the NHC has decided to keep Chantal a weak tropical storm. Looking at the image above, you see a clear burst of convection; however the loops show that this is the only thing keeping Chantal alive -- looking at ASCAT satellite derived winds and aircraft recon data.

Looking at the raw data from the Hurricane Hunter aircraft, we see all kinds of zig zag circles. Having looked at this data for years and years, this particular path is odd. They usually do X's through the center of a storm, sampling for total rotation and wind strength. This one looks all kinds of goofy because they couldn't even find a closed low. They basically flew circles and lefts and rights, all just searching for the missing component, a westerly wind.

Remember, a tropical cyclone rotates counter clockwise, so you need winds coming from every direction around the center of circulation. Last night, they couldn't find a westerly wind component, meaning there was no closed low. The hurricane center doesn't do anything quickly, just wanting to make sure it wasn't an anomaly, so they once again sent out a recon plane today to investigate.

As mentioned earlier, they BARELY found that westerly wind component, so therefore they kept it a weak storm.

Ahead for Chantal: wind shear 30-40 knots, and lots of high terrain in Cuba. What this means, essentially, is that it has trouble ahead. The official forecast basically calls for her to become a depression before moving toward Florida, and I completely agree with this.

We might not have the prettiest weekend in Central Florida, but at least we aren't having to batten down the hatches! I'll be back tomorrow with another blog post, and of course in between blogs you can contact me at eburris@hearst.com. Have a great Wednesday!